Trouble Magnet

by DelSheree Gladden

  To me, that didn’t sound all that bad. Sure, losing the deposit money would have sucked, but Bernadette had a good job and could easily afford higher rent to live in a building not owned by a kooky old lady who probably should have been living in a retirement facility instead of forcing unassuming strangers to be her unwilling friends. Why on earth hadn’t Bernadette warned me about all of this?

  “The rules,” Sonya continued, “are pretty basic. Rent’s due on the first. Five percent late charge after the tenth. No loud TV or music after ten. No damaging the apartment. Hanging pictures is okay, though. No physical violence against any of the other residents, either.”

  That last one slapped me out of my self-pity and shot me up ram-rod straight in my chair. “Physical violence? Is that a problem here?”

  Sonya blanched. “Not recently.”

  I was going to die here. That was the real reason rent was so cheap. I’d finally escaped my past only to be roped into living in a funny farm where one of the other residents just might kill you in your sleep for playing your TV too loud or forgetting to put down the dumpster lids. Or maybe they’d just push you down the stairs. There were a lot of stairs here.

  What had I gotten myself into?

  No, what had Bernadette gotten me into? She was supposed to be looking out for me, not putting a target on my back!

  I stared down at the final page of the lease agreement. One more signature to go. Clearly, Sonya was certain I’d walk away. If I’d had any other options—and I mean any other options—she’d have been right. Instead of running from the insanity of this place, I sighed and scrawled my name one last time. As soon as I lifted my pen, Sonya grabbed both my hands and squealed in delight.

  “I’m so glad you’re staying! I was so sure you’d walk away when I realized Bernadette hadn’t prepared you.”

  Which was exactly why my traitorous sister hadn’t said a word.

  Before I could come up with a solid plan to pay my sister back for this, Sonya was back around the desk, my suitcase in hand, yanking me up from my chair and out of the office. The clunk-clunk of my suitcase banging its way up the stairs sounded like a death march. I was so focused on my own misery that I didn’t realize someone was coming up behind me until I was body-checked into the wall and another raised voice started ranting while waving a paper in Sonya’s face.

  “Is your grandmother serious about this?” a Hispanic woman in her forties yelled. “She demands I come to these stupid potlucks, but now she doesn’t want me to bring my son? She really expects me to find a sitter just to show up to one of her weird dinner parties?”

  A look of well-practiced patience settled over Sonya. “Marlene, you know my grandma is usually happy to have the entire family come to dinner, but Alonzo did take a permanent marker to her walls last Tuesday night. Anyone would be upset about that.”

  “He’s just a kid!”

  As mad as I’d probably be about marker on my walls, toddlers weren’t the easiest little beasts to control…

  “Alonzo is ten, Marlene,” Sonya said, which shut her up and made my mouth snap closed as well.

  Ten? Seriously? Never mind. I would have banned the little brat, too.

  “Why don’t you check with Beth in three-thirty? She’s the resident babysitter and I’m sure she’d be happy to keep Alonzo company while she does homework.”

  Marlene huffed, then spun around and marched back down the stairs without another word. Sonya shook her head and said, “Don’t mind Marlene…”

  “She’s always like that?” I finished. When Sonya nodded, I sighed. I was beginning to see a pattern.

  A few minutes later, Sonya stopped in front of a door with shiny brass numbers stating that we had arrived at apartment two-sixteen. “This is you,” she said as she handed over the keys. “Grandma’s dinners are at six o’clock on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and she’ll usually do something on holidays, too. Everyone brings a little something and you only have to stay for an hour.” She paused and bit her lip. “Really, it’s not that bad. I’ll be there.”

  She said that last part like it was supposed to erase everything else. All I could do was sigh in response. The only escape I was going to find was holing myself up in my new apartment. Reaching out with the key, I was jiggling it around in an attempt to unlock the deadbolt when shouting from next door erupted only moments before two sets of doors burst open.

  “I can hear your TV!” some crazy old woman—who I assumed was Ms. Sinclair—shouted at an equally peeved Baxter.

  “I don’t even have my TV on!”

  The old woman spun around and stomped back into her apartment, of course, slamming the door behind her. Baxter looked ready to do the same, but as he twisted around, he caught sight of me and glowered. “You’re my new neighbor?”

  I nodded, not daring to speak.

  “Complain about the noise of my TV once and…” His hands balled into fists as he tried and failed to contain his anger. “I don’t play my TV too loud, no matter what that old bat says.”

  I just nodded again, hoping he’d go away. Granting my wish, he turned back toward his apartment and I released the breath I was holding. “I’m going to kill my sister,” I muttered.

  It was barely loud enough for Sonya—who was standing right next to me—to hear, but Baxter paused and looked back at me, his eyes narrowing before disappearing into his apartment. Feeling suddenly weak in the knees, I leaned against the wall to steady myself. That last rule about physical violence was looking more and more necessary by the minute. The best I could hope for at this point was that the residents were as diligent about not killing each other as they were about not missing dinner with Grandma Crazy Town.

  2: Squared Away In No Time

  I’d tried calling my sister once I was safely tucked away in the apartment the night before. She hadn’t picked up. I was tempted to think she was avoiding me, but eventually had to admit it was probably due more to the fact that she was in Spain and I had no idea what time it was there when I’d called. My message of, “I hate you. Call me back,” hadn’t inspired an immediate response.

  I was halfway through orientation that morning when I finally got a text from her telling me to call when I was out of class. It was a long day filled with syllabi, tours of the facility, and picking up and organizing all the equipment and supplies my lab fees had paid for. By the time I made it out of the building and was heading for the subway, my brain was too fried to deal with my sister. Plus, getting on the subway would have cut off the call anyway.

  I used the time spent riding through the dark tunnels to emotionally and mentally recover from my day and prepare for talking to Bernadette. Usually, talking to Bernadette was a relief. Staying connected with her over the last few years was just about the only thing that had kept me afloat. She was always supportive and compassionate, eager to help. Why she had thrust me into a den of lunatics was completely beyond me.

  Still feeling exhausted when I stepped out onto the street again after my subway ride, I was tempted to put off the call until I could sit down. Half afraid to actually reenter my building, I figured a chat with my duplicitous sister might help delay the inevitable. She picked up seconds after I sent the call.

  “You signed the lease, didn’t you?” No greeting. No, hey, how was your trip? No, did you get settled in all right? Just the demand.

  All my frustration came spilling out at once. “How could you do this to me? Plumbing? Dinners with random strangers? Sonya practically attacking me with kindness? Those crazy people you were neighbors with? Have you lost your mind?”

  Silence.

  “Seriously, Bernadette. What on earth made you think this was a good place for me to be? You know how well I do with crowds, and what’s with the rule about not doing violence to your neighbors? Does that really need to be a rule? I mean, geez, it’s already against the law. Shouldn’t that be enough?”

  A long sigh whispered over the line as Bernadette exhaled. “Take a deep breath,
sis. It’s really not as bad as all that.”

  “Oh really? Then I didn’t witness at least four yelling matches yesterday before I even made it into the apartment? I thought I was going to faint when that psycho Baxter threatened me.” The building was just around the corner, suddenly, and I found myself cursing its nearness to the subway exit.

  “Baxter threatened you?” Bernadette asked. Sadly, she didn’t sound all that surprised. That didn’t make me feel any better.

  “He started to, anyway. That lady was yelling at him about his TV, which wasn’t even on, and then he said something about if I ever complain he’d…then he just kind of trailed off, but it still freaked me out a little.”

  Bernadette’s sigh was one of relief this time. “Honestly, Eliza, he was just upset at Ms. Sinclair. She’s always pushing his buttons and getting him riled up, but he’d never actually do anything to anyone.”

  Her brushing off my concern and taking no responsibility for the situation she’d put me in was infuriating, but I forgot all about it as soon as I turned the corner. An ambulance and two police cars were parked right in front of my building with a handful of cops wandering around. If that wasn’t enough to stop a person in their tracks, I nearly fainted right into the gutter when I saw a black body bag being rolled out the front door on a stretcher.

  “He killed her. He actually killed her.”

  “What?” Bernadette yelled. “He killed who? Who is he? What are you talking about?”

  She continued to rant, but I ignored her as I rushed across the street to find out what was going on. I made it as far as the sidewalk before a uniformed man stepped in front of me and held up a hand. “I live here!” I blurted out automatically.

  “I understand, but if you could wait just a few minutes while we sort things out, that would be best for everyone involved.”

  I was pretty sure he couldn’t stop me from going up to my apartment unless it was a crime scene. That thought set me back on my heels. There was a crime scene somewhere in this building. In the building I currently lived in. That wasn’t completely novel for me, but it was shocking all the same. “What happened?” I asked shakily. “I saw the body being wheeled out. Was it Ms. Sinclair?”

  The officer’s eyes narrowed at me. “Why would you assume it was Ms. Sinclair?”

  There was a rarely-heard-from part of my brain that was shouting at me to stop talking. It really hadn’t cropped up since the last time the police had dropped into my life, but it was there and desperate to be heard. I knew I should probably listen to it and not get involved, but if I was right and nobody arrested Baxter, there was no way I could sleep in the apartment next to him without fearing I would be next.

  Even still, the police weren’t always to be trusted. “I just moved in yesterday. I only know a few people.”

  “And Ms. Sinclair was one of them?”

  Was? “It was her I saw, wasn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You said was. Past tense.”

  The officer bristled. Annoyed at having given something up, even if it was small, he folded his arms across his chest. “Why did you automatically assume the deceased was Ms. Sinclair? Is there someone who would have wanted to hurt her?”

  “It wasn’t natural causes?” I asked as my panic began to grow. After last night, I had jumped to murder, but I’d really, really been hoping the crazy old woman had just had a heart attack or something.

  “What makes you think it wasn’t natural causes?” the officer demanded.

  “Why would you ask me about someone hurting her if it was?” I snapped.

  Huffing, the officer squared up like I might be some kind of threat to him. Holding back the urge to roll my eyes wasn’t easy. His stone-wall posture said he wasn’t going to give me anything else, whether intentional or not, but I needed to know. I wasn’t setting foot in that building until I was sure it was safe.

  “Have you arrested him yet?” I demanded.

  “Arrested who?” the officer asked, suddenly interested in talking to me again.

  “Baxter!”

  I’d only heard his voice twice, but there was no mistaking it when it erupted right behind me. “What?”

  Spinning around, my knees actually started to buckle when I found myself less than six inches in front of Baxter. Two hands grabbed at me, which almost made me scream, because his was one of them. A guy as good looking as Baxter holding onto me should have been comforting, but the intensity of his voice startled me into pulling away. “Let go of me,” I begged.

  Baxter shook his head like I was the crazy one, but didn’t let go. He pulled me closer instead. “You’re the one who was calling me, so what do you want?” His tone was anything but friendly.

  “I wasn’t…calling you, I was…” My voice trailed off before I could say something incredibly stupid. Like that I’d been offering him up as a suspect. I thought I was good until Officer Genius opened his stupid mouth again.

  “She was telling me to arrest you,” he so helpfully supplied.

  “What?” For once, Baxter sounded more confused than angry. He finally let go of my arm and pushed me away from him and into the officer, who still had a hold of me for some reason. Baxter’s eyes narrowed at me and I was suddenly glad for that other hand on my arm. “Arrest me for what?” he demanded.

  “For murdering Ms. Sinclair,” the officer said.

  Baxter’s eyebrows spiked right to the top of his forehead. I wasn’t exactly qualified to read other people’s facial expressions, as I’d spent the last few years avoiding society in general, but his surprise seemed honest. To me at least.

  “She’s dead?” Baxter asked. He rubbed one hand across his chin and mouth as he processed the announcement. He didn’t exactly seem all that sad about the news, but he was plenty shocked. That was until he remembered how he ended up standing here. Red crept up from beneath the collar of his dress shirt as he glowered at me once again. “And you told them I did it?”

  “I, well, you were screaming at her last night, and you threatened to throw her cat out the window if she didn’t stop complaining about your TV being too loud,” I snapped. “You were the first person who came to mind!”

  “I didn’t kill her!” Baxter shouted. Several heads turned our way, which only pissed him off even more. Jamming a finger in my direction, he said, “You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and you think you have any idea what it’s like to live in this insane asylum? Everyone in this building has motive to kill Ms. Sinclair.”

  Jerking me back behind him, the officer stepped up in front of Baxter. He was a good four inches shorter, but he was solidly built and confident enough to stare down someone I was pretty sure could beat the living daylights out of him. “Why, exactly, would someone in this building want to stab to death a harmless old lady?”

  “She was stabbed to death?” I whispered, nearly fainting at the thought of all that blood. The officer reached out and grabbed an arm to steady me again, but didn’t take his eyes off Baxter.

  “I’m not saying anyone in this building killed her,” Baxter said through his teeth, “especially not me, but she made everyone’s lives hell in this building, turning people in for the smallest infractions, lying if she couldn’t find anything legitimate, writing up her own tickets and taping them to people’s doors. I doubt you’ll find a single person in this building who didn’t have a beef with her, but I doubt any of them actually killed her.”

  With a smug look plastered across his face, the officer asked, “And why not?”

  “It’s against the rules,” Baxter said.

  I totally got what he meant, but the officer’s smugness slipped away as confusion set in. “Of course it is,” he snapped. “It’s against the law to murder people no matter where you live, not just in this building.”

  Rolling his eyes and grinding his teeth, Baxter stretched his neck and shoulders to ease away some of his frustration. “No kidding, you moron,” he said, “but that’s not
what I was talking about. The lease agreement we all had to sign prohibits physical violence against other residents. If you break the rule, you and your whole family are out. No second chances. Lose your temper and throw a punch, and the cheapest rent in town, in one of the nicest old buildings in town, will blacklist you for the rest of your life.”

  The officer stared at him for a moment, probably trying to figure out whether Baxter was serious or not. He was definitely serious. Not only because I didn’t think Baxter was capable of being anything other than serious, despite the fact that he couldn’t have been more than thirty years old, but because I had checked rental rates all around town last night and was still recovering from the sticker shock. Eventually, the brilliant officer seemed to realize Baxter wasn’t lying and backed down by a hair.

  “That may be, but I still think a few questions are in order.”

  Getting his hackles up all over again, Baxter pointed past the good officer to me. “Maybe you should start with her, then. She’s new, so no one knows anything about her, and she said she was going to kill her sister last night.”

  I knew he’d heard me! “I didn’t mean it, and you know it!” I snapped. Baxter stepped forward, ignoring the officer and getting practically nose to nose with me. Well, more like my nose to his Adam’s apple. His towering didn’t make me back down this time, not with his petty accusation hanging between us.

  “Next time,” he said, “don’t go around pointing fingers at people based off nothing, and people will stay out of your business, too.”

  “Maybe you should stop barging into offices yelling about TV volume and cats and screaming at your neighbors in the hallways, then nobody would be in your business, either.”

  The officer may not have been the brightest crayon in the box, but he was brave enough to step between Baxter and I and push us each back a few steps. “How about the both of you stick around to answer a few questions since you’re both so keen on pointing the finger? I’m sure we’ll get this all squared away in no time.”